Mom C's Blueberry Muffins

One of the few upsides to insomnia is the extra time it affords. And so on Thursday morning, when work anxiety awakened me at 4:30 a.m., I decided to channel it productively into something sweet and delicious -- old-fashioned blueberry muffins.

Mom C's Blueberry Muffins recipe is from the collection I just got from Arthur Schwartz. It was sent to Arthur in 1997 by Janet C. Evans who noted that the recipe is "really yummy!" and 60 years old (today almost 80 years old). That makes sense as the finished product is nothing like today's ginormous overly sweet cakes baked in muffin tins. Instead, it is a small flavor-packed slightly sweetened muffin, with nary a muffin top in sight.

There are just a few ingredients in these muffins and they can be put together in minutes, just in time for breakfast.



Mix the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and then the milk and dry ingredients.

Fold in the blueberries last.

Spoon into paper-lined muffin tins.

Bake for 20 minutes or so and voila, the perfect breakfast treat.

Production notes: I used butter (not Spry) and a mixture of frozen and fresh blueberries (because at 5 a.m., one can't be choosy). There was no milk in the house, so I used 1/2 cup of half and half mixed with 1/2 cup of water. I filled each muffin tin about 3/4 full which made 22 muffins.

Blueberry Cake

Finding myself with way too many blueberries from a recent berry picking adventure in Fishkill, New York, I set out in search of a blueberry muffin recipe among my thousands of vintage recipe cards.  I couldn't find a single one.  But then I remembered a stash of recipe cards from New Englander Olive Facey that I had set aside and voila, the first card in the pile was Blueberry Cake!  (If your heart is set on muffins, this recipe would work perfectly.)

This is a delicious cake; the nutmeg adds a really nice flavor note.

Although the recipe doesn't say to, it's best to coat the berries in a small amount of flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and flour to the butter-sugar mixture.

Carefully fold in the blueberries at the end.

The batter is quite thick; you'll need to use the back of a spoon or offset spatula to spread it in the pan.

If you flour and grease the pan, the cake releases beautifully.

Like many of the recipe cards in my collection, this is little more than a list of ingredients.  The method I used is below.

Blueberry Cake
Preheat oven to 400F.  (I baked it at 350, but next time would raise the temperature or bake it a bit longer than the 30 minutes called for.)
Grease and flour an 8-inch pan.

Mix 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room temperature unsalted butter with 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy.
Add one egg and combine well.
Combine 2 cups flour, 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg in a bowl.
Add the dry mixture and 3/4 cups milk, alternately to the butter-sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
Fold in the blueberries.  (I used about two cups.)
Pour into pan, and spread to the edges.
(I topped the cake with some brown sugar.)
Bake until a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool and serve.  Enjoy!